Globalisation where on one hand, has improved the business world and promoted communication and relationships across borders and cultures, on the other hand, it has also made business models more and more complex. Communication gaps are proving to be a big challenge and may turn into a threat, depending on the situation.
The managers cannot be present everywhere at all times and for every occasion. In such cases, they have to either delegate the decisions or can only participate virtually. This creates another problem of lacking a personal touch, deep understanding of the other culture, understanding of the problem, implications of the decision taken or all of the above.
We live in an altogether new reality now. A virtual reality. The world we live in is as virtual as it is physical and we need to accept that. Organisations need to bring in people who are more technologically savvy. They need to find people who are comfortable with working in that kind of an environment. There also comes the part where they have to work with people they have only worked with virtually and have not even met once in person. This lack of personal touch can give rise to many problems, such as disagreements over trivial matters which might lead to hampering the organisation’s overall functioning. Building trust this way is also very difficult. People don’t tend to trust someone they have not met personally.
“I refer to this as translating, how we translate our message and strategy, be it from corporate to a region or from regions back to us?” says Dave DeFilippo, chief learning officer at Suffolk Construction, on the panel of Northeastern University’s 2015 Global Leadership Summit.
As technological advances make global communication easier than ever, managers are increasingly faced with a critical challenge: how to be continuously present without being physically present to oversee teams based all over the world.
Anushka Singh
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